


linger like a tattoo kiss

by AppleJuiz



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Light Angst, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Sukka Week 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:13:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26240944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AppleJuiz/pseuds/AppleJuiz
Summary: The trickiest thing about soulmarks is that the only touch that counts is skin on skin. Because when you’re wearing parkas and mittens for most of your life there’s not a lot of skin showing that you can brush up against. Looking for soulmates can be deliberate in the tribe because of it, but more often than not it means you can know your soulmate for a while before knowing they’re yours.It also means that when you’re wearing an ankle length skirt and long gloves to give your wrists support, that you can get so close and comfortable with someone that touch becomes easy and negligible and when you actually touch for the first time you kinda completely forget to notice.
Relationships: Katara & Sokka (Avatar), Sokka/Suki (Avatar)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 152





	linger like a tattoo kiss

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a short little fic for Sukka Week and also bc I love soulmate AUs, but it Uh escalated pretty quickly. 
> 
> Title is from cardigan and was almost ‘marked me like a bloodstain’ and yes I listened to it too much and started crying.

Sokka learns early that war is no place for soulmates. 

He thinks it’s cool at first, that when your soulmate touches you for the first time it’ll leave a colorful mark on your skin, a reminder and a sign and a connection that can’t just get washed away. But then he learns that war leaves its marks everywhere, on everyone, and every time it touches you, and soulmates start to feel a little less special. 

He watches elders around the tribe with their pink-red burns from raids that almost look like soulmarks. He takes in the adults with permanent fingerprints on their wrist or colorful palms, and the kids and adults who are blank slates, waiting and mourning respectively. He watches his dad in the days After, when the blue mark over his temple turns grey and slowly fades like an old injury, like it’s not its own open bleeding wound. 

Sokka decides he doesn’t have a soulmate around a year after that. He’s not a kid anymore (he still is of course but he doesn’t feel like one), and he’s pretty sure he’s touched every other kid in the village and has left no mark. So it’s obviously not in the cards for him. But it’s almost better this way, because what would he even want a soulmate for. He has his family already and will do anything to protect them and the last thing he needs is another person he has to worry about. 

“Does that mean I don’t have a soulmate?” Katara asks him. “Because I’ve touched everyone in the village.” 

“Probably,” he says and her lip starts to wobble, eyes shining. His stomach drops. “No, don’t cry, that’s a good thing.” She starts to cry anyway, valiantly trying to look like she isn’t, swiping at her face with her mittens. 

“Why is that a good thing?” she asks, shoulders shaking. He drags her into a hug, letting her bury her face in his coat. 

“Because soulmates are stupid,” he says. Having a soulmate doesn’t protect the village, having a soulmate doesn’t make you a better warrior, having a soulmate doesn’t stop black snow or metal ships or any other terrible piece of war. Having a soulmate is having another person to lose. 

“Take that back,” Katara says, thumping his shoulder. She’s still such a hopeful idealist and he thinks he’s more than willing to be the boring practical one for them because it’s something he loves so much about her. 

He rubs her back. “I’m sure your soulmate won’t be stupid,” he says, with a quiet sigh. 

He does wonder a little bit, in the years in between, as the other kids in the village all start getting their dark blue marks in, as he brushes hands during snowball fights and when passing bowls at group dinners and nothing happens. Which for him is fine, obviously, he doesn’t care, but Katara. His sister is perfectly lovable and obviously wants a soulmate even if she tries to hide the way she checks her skin every time she brushes up against someone else. 

For a time he thinks that maybe it’s because of their mom, that maybe something in their family is broken now that she’s gone. But then he grows up a little more and realizes they’re far from the only people who have been hurt by the war so there goes that theory. 

The men all leave for the frontlines and it’s the first time he thinks his soulmate could be out there, outside of the tribe, out in the world. Not that he has a soulmate or wants a soulmate. But he stands on the walls of their village and stares out at the world and feels a pull, to be there and fight, but also the strangest feeling that something is out there waiting for him.

He figures at the very least that Katara’s soulmate must be out there somewhere even though he doesn’t like the idea of Katara leaving the tribe. 

He ends up, of course, being wrong in that Katara’s soulmate isn’t out there at all but right under their noses. He spots the blue mark on the back of Aang’s hand when they get back from penguin sledding, a darker blue than his tattoos and knows even more that he is nothing but trouble. And then Aang is the Avatar, and his sister’s soulmate is the Avatar. The Avatar is trouble and soulmates are trouble, but he learned from a young age that his sister’s trouble is his trouble, and the war is the most trouble anyway. 

So off they all go. 

  
  
  


Aang keeps his blue mark but doesn’t leave his own. Which personally Sokka thinks is stupid. It’s so obvious that they’re soulmates even without the mark.

He thinks they should just get it over with. He knows there’s a lot of ceremony to a second mark if it happens long enough after the first. You get to choose, you get to be careful and deliberate with where the mark goes. The first mark is a story, a discovery, a fluffy warm meet cute. The second mark is a vow. Some couples wear their second marks loud and proud in the most obvious spots on hands and cheeks. Others hide them away, somewhere special and personal. 

For a time he thinks maybe that’s it. Maybe Katara wanted her mark up on her shoulder or on her elbow or something. But then one time she and Aang almost brush hands while reaching for the same bag at the same time and his sister almost throws herself off the moving bison. And then Aang apologizes so much that Katara threatens to knock him off Appa and Sokka just plants his face in his hand because they’re a train wreck. 

“I’m just… not ready,” she explains when he asks one night, Aang snoring feet away. 

“Oh please, you’ve always been ready to meet your soulmate,” he whispers back. “What’s wrong? Do you not like him?”

“No! I mean, I do like him, I… yeah, I like him a lot,” she says and he can tell she’s blushing and is disgusted. “It’s just different now that I’ve met him. I don’t know, I’m not ready. I want to take my time.”

“Fine,” he says, shrugging, not saying all the things he’s thinking about how time is a luxury that's in short supply these days. “It’s not like he’s going anywhere.”

The conversation ends there and the two keep doing their little dance around each other. Aang is respectful and careful, and explains a little bit about Air Nomad rituals about second marks. Sokka’s mostly just curious about the color, if it’ll be yellow or grey or if it’s different because he’s the Avatar, like maybe it’ll glow or something. Katara is not amused when he speculates with her. 

It’s fun to tease them over, and interesting to watch Aang touch his mark when he’s uncertain, gross to watch Katara stare at it when she's thinking. But he smiles sometimes when they cuddle up, fully bundled in clothes and blankets but together nonetheless, taking in the easy camaraderie they have, like they’ve known each other for years instead of weeks. 

He still has no interest in a soulmate, but it does warm his heart. 

  
  
  


The trickiest thing about the marks is that the only touch that counts is skin on skin. Because when you’re wearing parkas and mittens for most of your life there’s not a lot of skin showing that you can brush up against. Looking for soulmates can be deliberate in the tribe because of it, but more often than not it means you can know your soulmate for a while before knowing they’re yours. 

It also means that when you’re wearing an ankle length skirt and long gloves to give your wrists support, that you can get so close and comfortable with someone that touch becomes easy and negligible that when you actually do touch for the first time you kinda completely forget to notice. 

Suki trains him for three days. And in three days, they tumble and tussle. They land hits, mostly her, and move through blocks. Her hands readjust his positions without thinking, her feet tapping his ankles and knees into place. It becomes natural to move in and out of each other’s space. 

He’s so grateful for her, in so many distinctive ways, all the while knowing he has given her nothing in return and can’t even think of anything comparable he has to offer. 

It’s not that he doesn’t notice her, how her eyes shine, how the corner of her mouth twitches when he makes a joke, how her hair curls over her chin, brushing her shoulders and how his eyes get trapped there sometimes in the tips of her hair. He can’t even bring himself to think of her as beautiful because even though she is, it feels hardly fair to her to think of her that way when beautiful is just breaking the surface of what she is. And he knows that it doesn’t even matter because he’s been making a fool of himself from the second he met her and the fact that she even talks to him is unbelievable. 

He doesn’t have time to think about that or anything when it actually happens. 

He’s leaving and he’s trying to put to words what she’s done for him and how sorry he is and he’s still getting it wrong, she’s still teaching him even in these last seconds they barely have the time to spare. And then she’s kissing his cheek, right by the corner of his mouth, her lips sticky with red paint but soft and warm and on his cheek, and his skin burns and his face flushes and his stomach dips. 

He leaves because he has to and tries not to look back. 

He’s still reeling from all of it when he washes the face paint off and Katara gasps. 

“Sokka!” she says, throwing her arms around his neck. 

“What?” he asks, floundering. “What happened?” 

“Congratulations Sokka,” Aang calls from Appa’s head, beaming at him. 

“When did it happen? Why didn’t you tell me?” Katara shoots off when she pulls back. 

“What are you talking about?” he asks, squinting at her. “Did you hit your head?”

“Your soulmark,” Katara says, rolling her eyes. 

“My what?”

And she reaches up and points right to his cheek where Suki has kissed him. Which is ridiculous, because she wasn’t there, she didn’t see, she doesn’t know, and there’s nothing to know.

“Why is it shaped like that?” Aang asks. 

“Who was it?” Katara asks. 

He shakes his head once and then does it again, harder, pushing the gears in his brain back into place. 

“It’s just some makeup,” he says, reaching for more water. He can still feel the place on his cheek, how it feels warm and burning, and he scrubs at it hard. 

“Sokka,” Katara says, frowning at him, but not in the way she usually does, all disappointed and disapproving, like she’s sad for him. 

“What?” he asks, taking one more angry scrub over the skin. 

“It’s still there,” she says unamused. He presses his hand over his whole cheek and leans back hard against the side of the saddle. His stomach churns and he thinks he might actually puke. “Uh, are you okay?”

No. No he’s not okay. He feels sick. 

He needs to go back. He needs to go back right now and drop down to the sandy shore and race for the village back to that porch or the training building and, and… 

He wants to get as far away from here as possible, as fast as possible, and he wants to fly it himself, no bison, so he doesn’t have to sit here and think, doesn’t have to feel his sister staring him down with concern and confusion because she’s never understood why this is the worst thing to him, how it’s even worse than he imagine. 

And better because Suki is incredible and beautiful and kind and fierce and a warrior and a leader and a teacher and more and more and more, and she’s his.

No she’s not. No she can’t be. 

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” Sokka says. “Wow, what a day. I’m gonna get some sleep.” He fake yawns and slumps down into the saddle and turns away from his sister and feels his brain race and his heart pound. 

There was a time before Sokka decided he didn’t want a soulmate, obviously. A time when he ate up his parents’ story, the first mark on his mom’s wrist at the space between her mittens and her coat sleeves, the second on his dad’s temple, a swipe of her thumb, gentle and purposeful. There were bedtime stories about falling in love in lands far away, the uncertainty of a deliberate first touch with someone you already cared about, the surprise of matching with a stranger and looking into their eyes and finding something familiar. 

He used to want it like all kids did. 

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It was supposed to be romantic. He wasn’t supposed to ruin it by being stupid and arrogant and rude. He wasn’t supposed to be falling behind almost the whole time, his shortcomings all laid bare in front of this person who was everything he wanted to be even if he didn’t know it. He wasn’t supposed to learn about the mark from his sister, miles and miles away from his… soulmate. 

In another world he would spend the night thinking about what she meant by that kiss. Whether it was real, if he had seen something in her eyes while they were training and it wasn’t just a trick or the daylight. Whether it was proving a point, to show him that he was still so wrong about her and about himself and about what it even meant to be a warrior. Whether it was just a goodbye between new friends, whether it was a joke, whether she thought about it at all or whether she kissed everybody on the cheek, whether she ever wanted to see him again. 

He does think about that. But he also thinks about soulmates and marks and whether this changes everything or changes nothing at all. 

She doesn’t know. And if he never sees her again, she’ll never know. And if she doesn’t know and if he never sees her again, is it almost like not having a soulmate at all?

If she knew, what would she do about it? If she knew, would she regret kissing him on the cheek, regret taking the time to train him, regret not feeding him to the Unagi after all? If she knew, would she not want a soulmate either? 

If she knew, where would she want her mark? Where would she want him to touch her to say that she’s his and he’s hers? Would she want it private, the top of her shoulder, the back of her neck, the inside of her forearm? Would she want it loud, her cheek, her forehead, her hands, her neck?

And then he’s just thinking about touching her, about her hands on his wrists guiding his touch along her skin just the way she would guide him through different training forms. And then his heart is pounding and his breath is fast and this is wrong. She’s a warrior, he reminds himself, and a leader and a teacher and the type of person he wishes he could be, a type of person he didn’t know existed, another type of person he can never measure up to, and it’s not fair to think of her like this after everything she’s done for him. 

_ I’m a girl too _ , her voice whispers in his mind. He presses his fingers to his cheek again. 

She’s his soulmate. 

He barely sleeps an hour and wakes up with a headache. But for a little under an hour he dreams of orange-pink sunlight that brushes against his skin like fingertips. 

  
  
  


It’s a few days later when he finally finds a mirror in a market they pass through and sees the mark for himself. 

It’s gold. That’s the first thing he notices and he can’t breathe. It’s gold as her fans and the setting sunlight on the island. It’s right there, barely an inch away from the corner of his mouth and the unmistakable shape of a kiss. 

He has a soulmate. 

He has a soulmate who protects her village, who makes him a better warrior, who leads the charge against war ships and armored soldiers. He maybe knows nothing about what soulmates are at all. 

He puts the mirror down and walks back over to Aang and Katara. Soulmates aren’t going to get them to the North Pole, he reminds himself. Soulmates aren’t going to end the war. So if he’s still standing and the war is over then he can worry about the golden mark on his cheek. 

Of course he’s lying to himself, he’s already worrying about it, he’s already thinking about Suki all the time. But if he just pretends that he doesn’t care then… well, nothing changes at all, but it makes him feel like he’s not going crazy. 

She doesn’t know, he reminds himself at night. He might never see her again.

He wishes he knew if that was a good thing or a bad thing. 

  
  
  


He gets weird looks sometimes. It’s the placement probably. It’s a bold mark, from a bold girl. 

It’s gold, which not a lot of people know what to do with. Nonbenders can sometimes leave different colors than that of their nation, but it’s extremely rare and gold is pretty distinctive. The Kyoshi Warriors are pretty isolated, not a lot of word about them travels far. The occasional merchant who has stopped by the island recognizes the color for what it is but also looks surprised to see it on him. 

Aang gets weird looks too, for his arrows and his clothes, for his blue mark. He and Katara get looks for their blue eyes and their blue clothes. 

The world is a divided place and a scared place, with very little room for soulmates.

He meets Yue and it’s exactly the way he thought soulmates would be once upon a time. She’s a princess. He’s awkward. She laughs at his jokes and he trips over his feet and this is what the stories are made of. Not being dumb and cocky and landing on a wooden floor and having his world rattle with his head. Not asking for forgiveness again and again, not three days of learning more than he thought he had room in his head for and leaving forever. 

It’s easy with Yue, and sweet and romantic. (But it’s not the same as being seen even under face paint and armor. Even he knows that.)

Yue has a white mark on the back of her neck, an unnaturally perfect circle, where she was touched by a moon spirit. Sokka doesn’t ask, she explains it for him. 

“Who’s your soulmate?” Yue asks just as bluntly. Because he can’t hide it. He’s marked for the world to see. 

He leans back against the side of an ice bridge and lets the air gust out of him. “Her name is Suki,” he says and winces at how his voice goes soft and broken over her name. “She’s a Kyoshi Warrior.”

Yue raises her eyebrows. 

“And?”

“She doesn’t know,” he says, which is the first time he’s saying it out loud even though he’s thought it maybe three times a day since they left Kyoshi. “I don’t know how to tell her.” 

And oh, that’s new. 

It’s true. He literally doesn’t know how he could get word to Kyoshi and even if he did, he wouldn’t know what to say. 

“Why not?” 

The list is miles long. 

“She doesn’t want me,” he says, even though he’s not sure that’s the truth. It’s just the simplest fear of his to name. He almost wishes it was true, since it would put the whole thing to rest. 

“That’s impossible.” And he’s not sure if she means it in the way that one sided soulmates aren’t a thing or in the way that he is somehow a want-able person. It makes him blush anyway. 

“I never wanted a soulmate,” he says, ducking his head. 

“But you want her,” Yue says, her hand closing around his, an easy touch, without any pressure or build up, relief or disappointment. It’s just a touch now. 

“I don’t know,” he says. It’s the first lie he’s told her so he goes for a different truth. “I like you.”

She smiles. “I like you too,” she says, but their eyes meet and they know it’s different. This whatever they have between them is fun but it’s safe. Because he has a mark on his cheek and she has a betrothal necklace, so they know going in that it’s not for keeps, it’s not going to last. 

Unlike his few days with Suki, he sees the goodbye coming and is ready for it. 

Or well, he thought he was. 

  
  
  


Here’s a thing Sokka didn’t know until the North Pole. You can have a soulmate and keep that soulmate and still get hurt, still feel the loss go bone deep. You can know someone who isn’t family and isn’t your soulmate and their loss can tear you apart just as easily. 

And everything that happens to you, everything that makes you smile and everything that makes you ache, you want to share it with your soulmate, you want that person to laugh with you in the bright afternoon hours when you see something that reminds you that there’s beauty in the world and you want that person to hold you at night when it’s dark and cold and you start to shake. 

Suki’s not on Kyoshi when they visit again. She’s out there somewhere helping the world. He gets a lot of looks for his mark but they aren’t confused this time. 

  
  
  


They’re in the desert when Katara finally gets her mark. She pulls Aang out of the Avatar state and down to the ground, holding his shoulders for a second while the winds slow and the glow fades from his eyes. She pulls him into her arms, hooks her chin over the top of his head with slow deliberateness and holds him while he cries. 

That’s his sister, he has to remind himself. That’s his sister doing her incredible awe-inspiring things, taking care of people, loving people, holding her best friend, her soulmate. He’s always known he’s not as powerful as her but he thinks it again now and it hits differently. He’s not as powerful as her, to love like that, to feel like that, to face the world and all it’s barbs unafraid. 

The mark is on her neck, right above mom’s necklace. It’s yellow like the desert sun.

  
  
  


“How did you know you were ready?” he asks. They haven’t talked about soulmates in a long time. He actively tries to avoid the topic actually.

“I wasn’t,” she replied. Her hand rubs absently over the mark. “Or maybe I was. I just knew that he needed me.”

“Is it weird?”

Because the second mark is where it’s at. You go from being soulmates to being Soulmates. Complete with a spirit deep connection that apparently is impossible to explain to anyone who hasn’t experienced it. 

“Yeah,” Katara says. He can see her smile in the dark and pretends he’s disgusted. “He’s hurting, even though he won’t talk about it. We don’t have to talk about it now, I guess, not with words at least. But it’s really nice.”

“Ugh, don’t be gross.”

She rolls her eyes and hits his shoulder. “I bet you won’t think it’s gross when it’s you and Suki.”

“Shut up!” he hisses and this is why he doesn’t talk about soulmates with his sister.

  
  
  


“Tickets and passports please.” The voice is harsh and firm, but familiar in a way that makes him run through a list of the people they might have pissed off. 

“Is there a problem?” he asks, turning around. For a second the guard opens her mouth to respond, her head tilted, her eyebrows raised, and then she freezes, staring at him with wide eyes. 

Sokka waits, slightly weary, as the team hovers behind him. The guard blinks and goes to say something else but stops again, still just staring at him. 

“Sorry,” he says. “Do I know you?”

She swallows, her eyes shooting down to his mark. Her gaze is so intent it makes him feel weird, makes him want to cover it up. 

“Uh, yeah,” she says, meeting his eyes again. “You could say that.”

And oh. Oh. 

It’s her.

“Suki?” he says, amazed at how normal it sounds, how normal he feels, like he hasn’t thought about her almost constantly for the past few months. 

“Hi, Sokka,” she says and smiles weakly, and he almost dies right there. 

He steps forward with his arms outstretched, brain flooded with raw endorphins because she’s here, she’s really here, right in front of him and he’s so happy to see her again. 

“Oh,” she says, eyes widening, smile dropping, stepping back. 

He can feel the way her eyes take in his bare arms before darting around the rest of the terminal and he’s never felt so naked. 

She knows. 

She knows now. The bottom of his stomach drops out. She’s here and she knows and the days where he thought he could run from this, the time he had to think this through are over now. 

She’s not looking at him anymore, she’s looking everywhere but him, and her eyes settle over his shoulder. 

“Hi guys,” she says, waving at the team. Katara is smiling deviously and Aang waves back. 

“Is anyone gonna tell me what is going on?” Toph demands. 

  
  
  


“I’m coming with you,” Suki says and he has literally every single thought he could possibly have about it in under a second. 

Good, because he doesn’t want to say goodbye just yet. 

Good, they’ll have time to talk. 

Bad, they’ll have time to talk. 

Bad, she’ll be in danger. 

Bad, he doesn’t know if he can protect her. 

Bad, he definitely can’t protect her. 

Bad, if losing Yue hurt that much, he doesn’t even want to think about what he’ll feel if anything happens to Suki. 

Bad, she knows.

Bad, she has changed into her full Kyoshi gear, not an inch of skin showing. 

Or maybe that’s good, safer. 

He doesn’t know. 

“Uh,” he says. “Are you sure?”

“Do you not want me to come?” she asks, leaning back, eyes narrow but intent, almost expressionless. He wants to know her, wants to know how to read the subtle look in her eyes, wants to understand her. 

“Of course I do,” he says.  _ You’re my soulmate _ , he doesn’t say.

Bad, he’s going to screw this whole thing up. 

  
  
  


_ Told you _ , he thinks, staring up at the moon that night.  _ She definitely doesn’t want me _ . 

The moon doesn’t say anything but he can imagine Yue rolling her eyes and it’s close. 

“Hey,” Suki says. He turns and sees her hovering a few feet away, hair moving in the breeze. 

“Hi,” he says weakly. He can feel his knees shaking a little. 

She knows and she’s here and…

“Do you wanna talk?” she asks, stepping closer, looking more hesitant than he’s ever seen her, even though he’s barely seen her, and that’s two things he wants to amend so bad. 

“About how we’re soulmates or about how I’ve been acting?” he asks. And miraculously, that’s the right thing to say because she smiles and walks over to sit next to him. 

“Why do I feel like the two are related?” she says. Her clothed shoulder brushes his and for a second it feels like it did on Kyoshi, not having to worry about personal space.

But his arms are still bare, and his cheek is warm, and all he can think about is touch. 

He watches out of the corner of his eyes as she pressed her lips together. 

“You don’t want a soulmate,” she says carefully, deliberately choosing every word, but he still hurts at the thought that she’s somehow saying, “You don’t want me.”

“No!” he says quickly. “That’s not it.”

She looks over at him, solid, unreadable. “Look, on Kyoshi, we believe in making your own destiny,” she says. “If you don’t want a soulmate, that’s fine. We won’t do a second mark, we can just be careful and keep our distance. It doesn’t have to change anything. We can still be friends.”

He shakes his head and wishes he could reach for her somehow but doesn’t want to chance it. 

“I didn’t want a soulmate,” he says. “But I want you.”

Her mouth drops open, lips parted around a quick breath. 

He freezes, realizing just how forward that sounds, and feels his face go hot and red. 

“Uh,” he tries. “I mean I like you. A lot.”

Her eyes are wide and she glances down at her hands, blinking quickly. 

“I was kind of hoping it was you,” she says after the longest second of his life. 

“What?” 

She smiles, ducking her head. “I knew it wasn’t anyone in the village after a while. I thought maybe I didn’t have one. That my destiny was to lead the Warriors and not to… have that. And then you showed up and…” She crosses her arms over her chest and continues a little more firmly, like she’s annoyed by the whole thing. “I don’t know, I like you I guess.”

“Why?” 

She furrows her eyebrows, like he’s being dumb. He probably is. “You’re one of the bravest people I’ve ever met.”

He feels his heart skip a beat, feeling like he’s fallen off the edge of the cliff and is free falling. 

“H-How?”

“You apologized, you humbled yourself, you listened,” she says, glancing over at him, her face softening. “Those things take bravery. You’re one of the fastest learners I’ve ever trained. You left your village to travel with the Avatar and save the world. You’re smart and funny and handsome. I… I kept wishing we had had a little more time on Kyoshi, to get to know each other, to see if we were... I kept hoping that I’d run into you again, until it was less hoping and more telling myself I would see you again, that I had to, just so I could know. I didn’t think that… with the makeup and everything…”

His hand drifts unconsciously to his mark, just brushing against his cheek. Her eyes track the motion before she meets his eyes again. 

“Sorry,” she says sheepishly. “That’s probably an inconvenient place for it.”

He shakes his head. “I like it,” he says. “And I’m glad it’s you. You aren’t the problem here.”  _ I am. _

She sits up a little, tilting her head and grinning easily. “There isn’t a problem here,” she says. “We get to decide what this is. We get to set our own boundaries and that’s all there is.” He watches the way her chest rises with a breath. She stands up and rolls her shoulders out, a gesture he recognizes from those three days back on Kyoshi. “Thank you for telling me all of this. And I’m sorry if I’ve been too forward. I just… I’m glad we got to talk.”

“Wait,” he says, because she’s stepping away like she’s going to leave and it makes him panic. He’s up and reaching, his hand on her lower arm. It’s his bare hand on her hard armor but they both freeze. “Don’t go yet.”

She turns back to him, eyes wide, questioning, maybe a little hopeful.

She thinks he’s brave. He wants to be brave. “The second mark… we should do it.”

Her eyebrows shoot up and he lets his hand drop back to his side. 

“Just to make sure,” he adds weakly.

“Sokka, that’s not…”

He winces. “I know,” he says. “I know. Look, I want to, if you do.”

Her eyes trace over his face, like she’s reading him, and he wouldn’t be surprised if she figures out what he’s feeling before he does. She’s already so much better at this soulmate thing than he is. He wonders if she’ll be kind enough to teach him again.

Her eyes stay on his as she tugs her glove off. His eyes flicker down, his heart pounding into overdrive. 

Her hand. He thinks of all the places where his fingers could fit against hers. She’s not done though, unclasping the brace on her forearm and rolling her sleeve up. 

He looks up at her again and he can see the blush high on her cheeks and wants to kiss her so bad he aches. 

She holds her hand out and he doesn’t move a muscle. 

“Here,” she says, pressing her fingers to a spot on the inside of her bare wrist. “I always wanted my mark right here.”

“Oh,” he says breathless. 

“My right arm’s my strong arm,” she explains. “No matter how hard I try to train myself out of it.” She takes a breath and leans forward. “And it would match the insignia on my armor.”

She holds her arm out towards him and a part of him wonders if he’ll ever be half as brave as all these incredible people in his life. 

“You… want me to…” He reaches vaguely for her arm but then stops because he has one shot to do this right. 

She frowns. “You said you wanted to.”

“I do!”

“Okay,” she says, pushing her arm a little close. 

“Okay.” He swallows, painfully aware that this is the last time that things will be this way, that he will not have a soulmate, that Suki will be just a girl he knows and likes. 

Of course that’s not true. Suki was never just a girl he knows. He’s had months of the knowledge of this thing, months to prepare and he didn’t, though he doubts there’s anything he could have done to be ready for this and her. 

“Well,” Suki says, fidgeting and shifting her balance between her feet. It’s a little sharp but mostly uncertain. She’s still watching him, and he realizes that she’s just as scared and unsure as he is, but she’s not running away from this like he has been. She’s facing it head on and like before, like always, he’s learning from her. “Look if you don’t want to…”

He leans down and presses his lips lightly to the inside of her wrist. 

“Oh,” she says and he realizes too late that she probably intended for him to use his hand. 

“Sorry,” he says, pulling away quick and looking at her again, vaguely horrified. 

She’s not looking at him anymore though. Her eyes are glued to her arm, to the dark blue mark on her skin. Her lips press together and she brushes her fingers over it, carefully tracing the outline. She smiles, the corners of her eyes crinkling and for a moment it feels like a private moment, something he’s trespassing on, that he doesn’t have a right to witness. 

But then he feels it in his chest, this fluttering warmth that presses at the inside of his chest, that’s not his. 

“Whoa,” he says, because it’s a staggering thing. And he understands why nobody even tries to explain what it’s like, because there’s no way to. It’s like gaining a limb or a sense or finding a new color that didn’t exist before. 

Suki looks up, schooling her face into something reserved and blank again, neutral and calm. He can feel her though, the jumbled mess of uncertainty and hope and excitement and fear. “Well, there’s that then.”

“Yeah,” he breathes, trying to parse out what he’s feeling underneath it all. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I thought—”

She shakes her head. “No, it’s… good,” she says. “We match.”

He feels something light and fluttery in his chest and then feels it twice over, until it’s this echo chamber of warm contented joy that they keep bouncing off each other. 

“Can I?” he asks after a moment of sorting through and processing it all, reaching for her hand. 

She holds her wrist out towards him and it blows him away how after so long of thinking about it, marks and touch and all, that it’s over. He has a soulmate and it’s her. He brushes his thumb over the mark and it’s weird little shape, an approximation of the same mark he has on his cheek. 

And he feels his face flush and his heart pound even as he still feels that stab of fear in his chest. But then there’s a soft surge of reassurance and calm pressing back, and that’s Suki. He looks up and she smiles at him and he smiles back. And actually nothing is over. Everything is just getting started.

  
  
  


It isn’t until the next morning, when she carefully lays out the beginning of a speech about coming along to protect him and why she’s going back to join the other warriors even though it’s highly unconventional to separate from your soulmate especially so soon after meeting, that he finally gets it. 

He can’t help but kiss her, not thinking about where his skin touches hers, just reaching and holding and touching. 

They’re soulmates. That was the point, right? That somehow the universe thought that they would fit, that somehow the spirits knew that they were a matched set. 

And he doesn’t know why he thought his soulmate wouldn’t understand him, because she does. She knows at her core the importance of duty, the responsibilities of a warrior. He doesn’t want to say goodbye so soon, but he understands that she can’t leave her girls behind, that they have their own battles to fight. 

She kisses him back with her arms around his neck. He can almost imagine her mark pressing against the skin at the back of his neck. 

He knows there won’t be color on his lips when they pull apart, but he feels like there should be. He feels like there should be marks on him everywhere she touches him because he’s gets it now and there should be something to show that. 

He can still feel her in his chest, the way her heart pounds and her knees shake. There’s relief and joy and excitement and he doesn’t even care to pick through which is hers and which is his. 

He tries to find a way to explain when they separate how he understands and how they’re soulmates and how he sees it now, the way they’ll fit together and make each other stronger. He can’t believe he ever thought she would be a weakness. 

And in the end he doesn’t even have to struggle though finding the words because they exchange a look and she already knows. 

“I’ll see you around,” she says, smiling like she knows something he doesn’t.

  
  
  


He can feel her getting fainter the further into Ba Sing Sae they get. But she’s still there, or at least he feels different than he did before, with all the special magic stuff that comes with having a soulmate now. 

He has dreams sometimes that he’s in a wide and empty space that’s maybe a field or maybe a desert or a beach or an ice drift. Somehow it’s impossible to tell. She’s laying next to him, staring at the sky and holding his hand, moving their laced fingers up to point at the stars or the clouds, he’s never sure when they are either. When she speaks he can’t make out the words she’s saying but he feels the rhythm of her voice, the pitch and the cadence that makes him think of music and the wind on a rainy day. 

It’s calm. It’s a dream that feels like sleep which is such a relief because sometimes his dreams put him to work. 

He wakes up fresh in Ba Sing Sae, knowing she’s close, feeling the faintest whisper of her with him. 

  
  
  


“That’s an interesting shape for a soulmark,” Azula says in a light sing-songy voice that makes his skin crawl. But it doesn’t matter because he is ignoring her and proceeding with the plan. “You know, I’ve actually seen one just like it. Probably just a coincidence though.”

And his blood goes cold. 

  
  
  


“There’s something wrong with the beds here,” he complains one morning at the Western Air Temple, rolling out his shoulders. “I keep waking up all achy.”

“Maybe your soulmate slept funny,” Zuko offers so casually it takes him a second to fully process the implications. 

He sits down hard, feeling his stomach flip violently. 

“Nice going, jerk,” Katara says, but she rushes over to his side, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and rubbing a hand along his back as he tries to remember how to breath. “I’m sure she’s fine.”

And the worst thing is, he remembers when they fled Ba Sing Sae, Katara carrying Aang as he flopped limply in her arms. He remembers the way her mark had been grey and colorless, like his eyes, but not the vibrant orange it should have been. He knows what it looks like, the pain he read in his sister's shoulders, the way her hands shook and every breath sounded like it hurt

And he is terrified. 

He knows that Suki is still alive at the very least. He starts checking his mark three times a day but it still doesn't feel like enough. 

  
  
  


He explains the situation to Zuko later, after a full day of Katara making him sweat about it. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t know.”

“Do you think that she’s…?” Sokka goes to ask, but doesn’t know how to finish. She’s alive. But she’s not safe, she’s not okay, so what else is there to ask. 

“Look, even I’m not sure what my sister is capable of at this point,” Zuko says, a haunted look in his eyes. Sokka wonders what it would be like to fear your sister, thinks about that terrible night under the full moon where he could only ache for the way Katara was hurting and scared of herself. “I don’t even know where she would keep her.”

Sokka takes a deep breath and considers his options. “What about war prisoners?”

  
  
  


“Do you feel hot?” he asks Zuko as they follow the stream of guards to the courtyard.

“We’re on a rock in the middle of a boiling lake,” Zuko shoots back. 

Which is fair. But it’s a different kind of hot. Like a little candle on the inside of his chest. 

But Zuko gives him a weird look when he tries explaining it that way. 

  
  
  


It’s Suki. 

It’s Suki and she tackles him in a hug and he holds her tight, almost laughing because of the way they fit together like puzzle pieces, the surge of emotion in his chest, that jumbled mess of hers and his and theirs that’s back again.

He was so worried this whole time about his soulmate being another person he’d have to worry about and protect, that he forgot how good it felt to protect someone, to comfort someone, to hold someone when they need you to. 

To have someone believe in you and to not fail them. 

He was so dumb to think that there would be any way to not enjoy caring about her. 

  
  
  


Katara gives him smug looks way too often when he’s with Suki. It’s not like he doesn’t deserve them.

It’s almost funny now how he convinced himself that soulmates were dumb and that he didn’t want one. Because now Suki is here and he is ridiculously into being her soulmate. She hardly needs anyone to take care of her, but that almost makes it even more exciting when he does. Sharing snacks and clothes and blankets and holding her hand and hugging her close and making her laugh. 

He can feel her in his chest, the moments she’s tense or worried or sad, when he can step in to help, to make her feel better. And then she does the same, when she sees past all the ways he tries to hide from the things he feels and just knows and is there. 

There’s still a war going on, even though it’s quiet on Ember Island. Underneath the sun and on top of the sand it feels like a calm and quiet life that he never knew could exist. They still carry the war on themselves in scars and in nightmares and worries and fear. But this whole time he thought that war somehow was more important than everything else, than love and soulmates and the good stuff. 

And then here’s Suki, holding his hand when he’s scared and kissing him before he drifts off to sleep like a protection, and letting him wrap his arms around her when she wakes up shouting in the middle of the night. And it’s not a weakness. It’s a sort of weapon, to push it all back, to fight against the fear and the pain and the way the war destroys. They don’t leave marks on each others’ skin anymore, but she runs her hands over his shoulders and he trails his down her arms and it feels like casting the war out from beneath their skin, stripping away any invisible marks it might have left and making new ones.

“Fine,” he tells Katara one night at dinner while they watch Suki and Toph play wrestle over the last serving of fish while Aang anxiously referees. “I was wrong about soulmates, you were right. Happy now?”

She holds her head high even as she widens her eyes all innocently. “I didn’t say anything.”

He rolls his eyes and drapes his arm over her shoulders. 

He feels so suddenly and overwhelmingly happy that Suki looks over at him with a grin, eyebrows raised. 

She ends up losing the fight. 

  
  
  


When the war is over, he sits out on a balcony in the Fire Nation palace and breathes.

“Hey,” Suki says when she finds him. She walks up and he notices the slightly limp she moves with, glances down at his own broken leg. 

“Sorry about that,” he says, wincing. 

She sits down next to him and digs her shoulder into his. “Yes. I’m very angry that you broke your leg.”

His hand finds hers without thinking. He wonders if that’s a soulmate thing too, just reaching out, touching without thinking, some cosmic spiritual force that pulls you towards each other. 

He wonders if it’s just a Suki thing. 

“So what now?” she asks. And he feels that same relief he’s overwhelmed with, in her too, along with the same uncertainty, the same lost anxiety thrumming beneath their skin.

“I don’t know,” he says and it’s almost exciting that that answer doesn’t carry the same disastrous panic it used to. If he doesn’t have a plan now, it doesn’t mean the end of the world. At least not literally. “Guess we figure that out.”

“We?” And it’s so amazing how she can still do that, just ask a question with no intonations or expectations. He can literally feel all of her emotions and still have no idea what she’s thinking. 

“Yeah,” he says, nodding. “Yeah, you know, if you want to.”

She beams and it outshines the sun for a second. “I thought I made it clear back there on the airships. You’re not getting rid of me that easy.”

Her fingers lace through his and he can’t see it but he can picture in his head the place where her mark is, dark blue and right over her wrist, her pulse, her heart. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. “That I ever thought I wouldn’t want you.”

She rolls her eyes but he can see the blush rise on her cheeks and it feels almost as good as winning. 

“Well, to be fair, it wasn’t the worst opinion you had when we met.”

He groans, squeezing his eyes shut. “Are you gonna let me live that down?”

She hums thoughtfully, leaning her head against his shoulder as they stare out over a little courtyard and watch the sun go down. “Probably not, but we’ll see.”

He’s actually pretty thrilled that he was wrong about everything. Because yeah, there was room for soulmates in the middle of the war. 

And now there’s no war at all. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading as always! I definitely struggled with making this story work for me so comments are extra appreciated! Classes have been starting for me so I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep churning out these little monster fics as fast as I have been but I’m going to try. I have a few more ideas lined up but feel free to send me prompts on tumblr or here. Hope you enjoyed reading!


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